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Dear Catholic Exchange:
I stumbled across this website while doing an internet search on whether or not the Catholic church is indeed a Christian church. I was raised Catholic, attended a catholic school, and took several years of catechism classes. Through all this I never understood who Jesus was and the fact that He paid the price for my sins (in full).
Here is what I learned as a young Catholic…
• Worshipping Mary was more important than Jesus, or the scriptures.
• Praying has an “act of contrition” or punishment (how sad).
• If I die wearing a scapular, then I go straight to heaven.
• We all go to purgatory. There are some sins God just can't forgive.
• The Catholic church can grant indulgences to sin.
• You can't be a Catholic if you are divorced, except for an annulment
and the accompanying fee.
• The priest is the one to forgive our sins.
And this is my short list. The bible supports none of this. In fact, much of the Catholic doctrine is a slap in the face of Jesus and his sacrifice at Calvary.
The true catholic history is one filled with violence, muder, lust, greed, and the pursuit of power. The Catholic church today feeds off of the poor and elderly in this country and abroad. It claims to be the true church that Christ started. Did Christ start a church to be filled with sexual perversions, and twisted theology?
Wake up Catholics! Read your bibles!!
What is more important, God's word, or your doctrine? Search the history and traditions of your church. So much of what is called “tradition' and Catholic doctrine is based on pagan religions that were absorbed into the Catholic church.
The Good News is this; God love us all. And though we are all sinners, He
paid the price for our sins so that we can enjoy eternal life with Him. There is no purgatory, no interceding for the dead, no lighting of candles, no confessional that can change this. Open your eyes and hearts, read your bibles, ask God for wisdom and move as He directs you. I know many Catholics that have hearts of gold and a passion for their religion.
Change this into a passion for God and His will, and you will indeed see a mighty change in this persons life.
I count it a mighty blessing that God placed in a Christian church that opened my eyes to who Jesus was and what He did. I learned more in one bible study than I did in 10 years of Catholic schooling. Religion is for naught, lest we rightfully serve the Risen Lord, Jesus Christ, and live with
His love and power in our hearts.
Joe Scheiber
Joe:
I'm sorry you got such terrible catechesis. I'm sure you will be relieved to learn that the Church in fact condemns the worship of Mary and always has. She is a creature, not the Creator. She is, it is true, given the highest honor due a creature, but it is still only the honor due a creature, not the honor due the Creator. And since we all honor creatures, that's no big deal (unless of course you spit on the command to honor your mother and father as weird way of “loving God”). So you don't have to worry about the Catholic Church teaching we should “worship Mary”. It doesn't.
As to the rest, what is wrong with a prayer of contrition (which means “sorrow for sins” not “punishment)? Psalm 51 is a prayer of contrition.
The devotion to the brown scapular is not meant to imply that the scapular is magic. If, as you claim in your opening paragraph, you want to know whether the Catholic Church is Christian, you can find out more here.
(By the way, is it really true that you learned this growing up? How old are you? One is hard pressed to find Catholic parishes where the devotions you mention are even known of, much less encouraged at a popular level anytime since the 60s. Are you *sure* you haven't just read up on such devotions after you decided to leave the Catholic Church? Just a question.)
Concerning “We all go to Purgatory”. This is simply not the teaching of
the Church. If you die in mortal sin(ie. in obstinate refusal of the grace of God), you will go to hell, not Purgatory. If you die in perfect conformity to the image of Christ, you will enter the Beatific vision. It is only if you die in the friendship of Christ, yet not fully conformed to his image that you will go to Purgatory. For a discussion of how Purgatory is perfectly biblical, go here.
There is only one sin God cannot forgive: refusal to receive his grace(also known as “blasphemy of the Holy Spirit”). The Church teaches this because Jesus did. What other sins did you think the Church said could not be forgiven?
The Church cannot and does not grant “indulgences to sin”. If you are
going to reject Catholic teaching you should at least take the trouble to find
out what it is. Otherwise, when you tell people you are “doing an internet search on whether or not the Catholic church is indeed a Christian church” it looks rather like you are really looking for excuses to tell lies about the Catholic Church in order to make yourself feel better for leaving it. For the real story on what indulgences are, go here.
(And, by the way, as with scapulars, one is hard pressed to find Catholics who are even aware that there are indulgences anymore, so I hope you will forgive my skepticism that your youth was filled with people running around racking up indulgences. This, like most of the stuff you list, sounds like
items on a checklist from some pamphlet on “Why the Roman Church is a Cult”, not like an authentic account of a real Catholic youth in the US anytime since Vatican II or, really, before it.
You can be Catholic if you are divorced. You can't receive communion if you divorced and remarried, because Jesus (remember him?) said that this was adultery. An annulment is not a divorce but a determination that there was never a valid marriage in the first place.
God forgives sins. However, Jesus empowered his apostles to forgive sins in his name. It's right there in John 20:22-23 — if you are *really* interested in being charitable to Catholics and not just firing off accusations from the “Thank God I'm not a Catholic Anymore Fundamentalist Pamphlet of Tired Accusations”.
So, the Bible *does* support Catholic teaching. It doesn't support things like “Mary worship” and “indulgences to sin”. But then those things aren't Catholic teaching. The Church does indeed rely on Sacred Tradition as well
as Sacred Scripture. That's because Paul told us to do so in 2 Thessalonians 2:15. Happily, you rely on Sacred Tradition too, or you wouldn't be an orthodox Protestant. The difference between us is simply that we rely on Sacred Tradition and know we do, while you rely on Sacred Tradition and don't know you do. Don't believe it? Read this (if you dare) from my book By What Authority?: An Evangelical Discovers Sacred Tradition
The sexual scandals in the Church are proof — that the Church has sinners in it. They are not proof of anything else (unless you wish to argue that the presence of Judas Iscariot in the early Church means Jesus founded a cult). Similarly, the fact that Catholic history is filled with violence and murder is an excellent argument — for rejecting the inspired Scriptures of King David and the validity of the Davidic monarchy and the Messiah that sprang from his line. Or, if you don't think that human sin destroys God's sovereign purposes with the Davidic monarchy, then you have to face the fact that the sinfulness of Catholics does not negate the Church's teaching or the presence of the Holy Spirit anymore than David's sins did.
Now, a question for you: Are you going to cling to the falsehoods about what the Church teaches that I have taken the time to educate you on? Or are you going to refuse to educate yourself so that you can go on cherishing bitterness against the Church? If the former, then you do right. If the latter, then you are choosing to bear false witness and deliberately embracing the choice to reject charity. That is not the act of a real disciple of Christ. I'm glad you've had an experience of mercy and grace from Christ. Now extend mercy and grace to brother and sister Christians in the Catholic Church by not bearing false witness against them anymore.
Find out what the Church actually teaches.
Oh, and by the way, I not only read the Bible, I write Bible studies for Catholic Exchange). And yes, I seek the help of the Holy Spirit to understand Scripture and don't just rely on “head knowledge.” Contrary to popular belief, Catholics do read Scripture. That's why we can show why the beliefs you confidently declare to be without foundation in Scripture are, in fact, well rooted there.
Write back if you are really serious about discovering “whether or not the Catholic church is indeed a Christian church”. However, if you were, in fact, writing to accuse and were already quite certain the Catholic Church is not Christian when you started your email, ask yourself why you
started your letter with a good solid lie.
Mark Shea
Senior Content Editor
Catholic Exchange
